I had heard bits and pieces of all these observations, but they synthesized it so nicely. The thing I had never heard before was the thing about "ages" (aeons) and the precession of the Earth. I mean, WOW, that "the ancients" were able to keep track of the sun for so long to at least notice the effect of the precession of the Earth. That kind of crap blows my mind.

Oh, but I thought the whole thing about Set -> sunset is stupid. Hours and horizon for Horus is more believable because Latin and Greek are both hora and ora (for hour) respectively. But sunset is different. Only in modern English is it something like "set" (that I know of). Anyway, they may be right about "set" but it seems wrong.

Oh, and I'm watching it again now. They screwed up the date for Dionysus. They put ca. 200 AD when it should be ca. 200 BC. O well.

most of the symbolism in xianity is co-opted from pagans, even their famous "xian fish" is really based on the vessica pisces, and was originally meant to represent a woman's womb/vagina, thus "fertility" (as one usage, there were others).

I don't care that I get strange looks from xians when i ask them why they put a relief of a pussy on the back of their car.

rarely, I actually get enough interest to get to show them the real history of the symbol.

don't know if any of them ever bothered to strip it off their car after that, but it doesn't really matter.

I had heard bits and pieces of all these observations, but they synthesized it so nicely. The thing I had never heard before was the thing about "ages" (aeons) and the precession of the Earth. I mean, WOW, that "the ancients" were able to keep track of the sun for so long to at least notice the effect of the precession of the Earth. That kind of crap blows my mind.

It's really difficult stuff. Just to figure out that the earth goes around the sun took dozens of very smart people many years of tedious and challenging observations. I'm reading Longitude right now, and it'll blow your mind how much work it takes to do what are now trivial things.

The Mitre. This is the distinguishing mark of the episcopal office -- a tall double-pointed cap, probably of Oriental origin, which can be traced back to pagan times; at least, something very similar was worn by kings in Persia and Assyria long before the Christian era.

no link to Dagon, but again, it's clearly a co-option of an important bit of pagan symbolism.

probably be able to find out more if you googled it for a little while.